China’s 2012 Report On Human Rights In The United States

China just released a report on the (lack of) human rights over the past year in the U.S.A. Are we living in an authoritarian society without knowing it? Via China Daily, when you put things this way, it sounds pretty bad:

The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2011 is hereby prepared to reveal the true human rights situation of the United States to people across the world and urge the United States to face up to its own doings.

In the United States, the violation of citizens’ civil and political rights is severe. It is lying to itself when the United States calls itself the land of the free (The Washington Post, Jan 14, 2012).

Claiming to defend 99 percent of the US population against the wealthiest, the Occupy Wall Street protest movement tested the US political, economic and social systems. Ignited by severe social and economic inequality, uneven distribution of wealth and high unemployment, the movement expanded to sweep the United States after its inception in September 2011. Whatever the deep reasons for the movement are, the single fact that thousands of protesters were treated in a rude and violent way, with many of them being arrested – the act of willfully trampling on people’ s freedom of assembly, demonstration and speech – could provide a glimpse to the truth of the so-called US freedom and democracy.

While advocating press freedom, the United States in fact imposes fairly strict censoring and control over the press and “press freedom” is just a political tool used to beautify itself and attack other nations. The US Congress failed to pass laws on protecting rights of reporters’ news sources, according to media reports. While forcibly evacuating the Zuccotti Park, the original Occupy Wall Street encampment, the New York police blocked journalists from covering the police actions. They set cordon lines to prevent reporters from getting close to the park and closed airspace to make aerial photography impossible. In addition to using pepper spray against reporters, the police also arrested around 200 journalists, including reporters from NPR and the New York Times (uschinapress.com, Nov 15, 2011). By trampling on press freedom and public interests, these actions by the US authorities caused a global uproar.

Poll by Pew Research Center indicated that in the second week of the movement, reports on the movement only accounted for 1.68 percent of the total media reports by nationwide media organizations. On Oct 15, 2011, when the Occupy Wall Street movement evolved to be a global action, CNN and Fox News gave no live reports on it, in a sharp contrast to the square protest in Cairo, for which both CNN and Fox News broadcast live 24 hours.

The US Patriot Act and Homeland Security Act both have clauses about monitoring the Internet, giving the government or law enforcement organizations power to monitor and block any Internet content “harmful to national security.” Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010 stipulates that the federal government has “absolute power” to shut down the Internet under a declared national emergency.

According to a report by British newspaper the Guardian dated Mar 17, 2011, the US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas, and will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives. The project aims to control and restrict free speech on the Internet (The Guardian, Mar 17, 2011). According to a commentary by the Voice of Russia on Feb 2, 2012, a subsidiary under the US government’ s security agency employed several hundred analysts, who were tasked with monitoring private archives of foreign Internet users in a secret way, and were able to censor as many as five million microblogging posts. The US Department of Homeland Security routinely searched key words like “illegal immigrants,” “virus,” “death,” and “burst out” on Twitter with fake accounts and then secretly traced the Internet users who forwarded related content.

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Accurate observations aside, the thought of China casting stones at anyone’s human rights abuses is one of the most blackly hilarious things I’ve ever heard.

The only thing to get is money

Correction: the thought of any nation casting stones at anyone’s human rights abuses is one of the most blackly hilarious things I’ve ever heard. Every nation has those who exploit and those who are exploited.

Monkey See Monkey Do

And one of the main entities that use exploitation are corporations.

The only thing to get is money

Indeed. But the problem per se is not the corporation itself, politics are heavily involved in capital. Corporate personhod, tax breaks, these have nothing explicity to do with the market. The fiscal crisis of 2008 would have certainly seen major corporations become defunct, but Obama initiated TARP uh oh. The governmnet allows these laws to continue to function and in turn the pockets of politicians get lined with moola.

DeepCough

Well, China seems like it would know a thing or two about human rights abuses, wouldn’t you say?

The only thing to get is money

Yep. Every country has an agenda. They each badmouth each other while committing atrocity. SMDH!

http://buzzcoastin.posterous.com BuzzCoastin

The difference is that:
China doesn’t pretend to be the land of the free.
Doesn’t pretend to value the Bill of Rights.
Or pretend that they are bringing freedom through the barrel of a gun.
Or that they have fair and free elections where anybody can be Prez.
They don’t go on about poor old Bradley Manning, Leonard Peltier or Jose Padilla
but the US is all over every blind artist that gets in trouble with Beijing.
Then parades around waving the flag, preaching freedom
and drumming up more money for weapons.

The Chinese may be human rights abusers
but they ain’t hypocrites about it.

DeepCough

I know, right?!

The only thing to get is money

Wow there must be some over-mind or world mind because I’ve had conversations with my father about these things. I told him China says “shut-up” so people know what to expect, the U.S. says “freedom of speech” and when you go to open your mouth it is quickly shut. Crazy stuff man.

http://buzzcoastin.posterous.com BuzzCoastin

I live in China
it ain’t perfect, but
the US has more people in prison than China
the US has 4 times more cops than China
the US has more political prisoners than China.
China’s population is 4 times larger than the US.
The blind Chinese dissident makes headlines
while Bradly Manning sits naked in his cell.
Land of the Free it ain’t.

The only thing to get is money

The funny thing is every nation operates in a similar way and fashion. Nations are there for preserving power and the status quo, not for providing a platform for deep, abiding, and sweeping change. These are always universally and unanimously resisted.

Dingdingchomp

Well if you can’t beat’em, join’em.

NinjaNoob

or ignore them and continue on your path

http://www.ContraControl.com/ Zenc

Or set their house on fire in the middle of the night and shoot them when they run out.

Wait… does anybody actually still doubt that we live in an authoritarian society?

Calypso_1

So does this mean the Chinese will petion the UN for a R2P mandate and free us from our evil overlords?

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1180747740 Dan Muench

So…right now…is a mother in China going, “You eat your dinner! Be grateful! Don’t you know, there are starving children in America?”

If nothing else, makes one wonder about the ‘knowledge’ we claim to have about the situation on the streets in China, considering the source…IMO, either of these countries throwing stones about human rights smacks of ‘jailhouse witness testimony’, but in this case, WE have been throwing the stones, standing in a house of glass. I don’t fault China for holding a mirror up – what else do we, ourselves, do here and elsewhere most days?

Haystack

Much like the North Korean propaganda video, this mostly consists of stuff we already say (openly) about ourselves.

http://buzzcoastin.posterous.com BuzzCoastin

If you read the piece in China Daily
you’ll find a pretty balanced piece
citing lots of US sources, including the DOJ, NYT & Washington Post
that clearly show the disconnect between the rhetporic and reality.

Which is something that the US could not do,
critique China through its own words and press.

But clearly
freedom of speech and a “free” press
has not helped insure freedom one whit.

The only thing to get is money

I read the full piece. The facts were well documented and hard hitting and a little bit more than mildy depressing. However, we must remeber that China is unleashing these details in it’s own interest. Ironically, the efforts of the US and China in badmouthing each other makes the common plebe more well informed and more capable of devising tactics to undermine authoritarian regimes in all their guises and forms.